Trombone - Cleaning and Lubricating the Slide

Hello again. I am trombonist Harry Watters and we are continuing on now with How to clean and lubricate this trombone slide. Now folks, this is where most beginning trombone players fall short because they don t lubricate and clean the slide nearly enough. I really advocate doing this every single day. So, what you are going to do is gently take the outer sleeve off of the trombone. It comes off just like that, isn t that cool? Then, you are going to grab a Kleenex and very gently wipe each inner sleeve off. Then, you can take the outer sleeve and gently connect it back to the inner sleeve but leave it almost all the way extended. Then, you are going to take Slide Lubricant, which you can get at any music store again and put a few drops on both inner sleeves. Now, many slide lubricant products come as a one-two combination. So, that is what we are doing right now, but again, you don t want to use too much. Then, you are going to work it in just like that. After that, you are going to spray on some water to the inner sleeves. Again, do this every single day, extremely important. So, we are talking about cleaning and lubricating. So, we have this lubricated but there is also one other thing that you need to be doing at least once a week and that s cleaning the interior of the slide. So, what you are going to do is get a Ramrod. Now, this comes with most new trombones or rental trombones. Take your ramrod and gently take your Kleenex and wrap it around the front end and then put it inside the inner sleeve and slowly twist it and it will come out all the way to the end. It is amazing, some of the gunk that comes out.

The next segment is going to be about producing a sound on a trombone.